Molecules 2008, 13, 319-330 molecules ISSN 1420-3049 © 2008 by MDPI www.mdpi.org/molecules Review Nitroalkanes as Central Reagents in the Synthesis of Spiroketals Roberto Ballini 1,*, Marino Petrini 1 and Goffredo Rosini 2 1 Dipartimento di Scienze Chimiche, Università di Camerino, via S.Agostino, 1, I-62032 Camerino, Italy; E-mail:
[email protected]. 2 Dipartimento di Chimica Organica ‘A. Mangini’, Alma Mater Studiorum–Università di Bologna, Viale del Risorgimento n. 4, 40136 Bologna, Italy; E-mail:
[email protected]. * Author to whom correspondence should be addressed; E-mail:
[email protected]; Fax: +39 0737 402297 Received: 8 January 2008; in revised form: 2 February 2008 / Accepted: 4 February 2008 / Published: 7 February 2008 Abstract: Nitroalkanes can be profitably employed as carbanionic precursors for the assembly of dihydroxy ketone frameworks, suitable for the preparation of spiroketals. The carbon-carbon bond formation is carried out exploiting nitroaldol and Michael reactions, while the nitro to carbonyl conversion (Nef reaction) ensures the correct introduction of the keto group. Several spiroketal systems endowed with considerable biological activity can be prepared using this synthetic strategy. Keywords: Conjugate addition, Nef reaction, nitroaldol reaction, nitroalkanes, spiroketals. 1. Introduction The spiroketal moiety is a key motif embodied in a large number of natural products present in plants, fungi, insect secretions, shellfish toxins and other living organisms [1-5]. Many of these compounds also display a considerable biological activity as antibiotics and pheromones. From a synthetic standpoint, among various practical strategies currently available for the assembling of the spiroketal unit, the one based on the acid promoted intramolecular acetalization of dihydroxy ketone derivatives 1 firmly occupies a prominent position (Scheme 1).